Hasta La Gadget!

Amid all the shaky speculation about whether Apple is buying Twitter and EA, two things seem certain. First, the company is working on a 10-inch touchscreen device. Second, Apple is making a strong push into the world of gaming–as evidenced by the company’s hiring of two former Microsoft Xbox execs.

The company’s predicted push toward gaming is assumed to be focused on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Since the runaway success of the iTunes App Store, the platform has become a dominant force in the perennially popular world of casual gaming.

The company’s relative openness in terms of third-party publishers and hardware features such as  touch controls and the built-in accelerometer have seen to that. Some recent releases for the iPhone have even explored the device’s potential beyond this market, a fact that Apple will no doubt be happy to capitalize upon with its recent hires.

That Apple is working on a 10-inch touchscreen device for the summer is being treated as an inevitability, as well. Apple refuses to comment on such speculation, maintaining a typical veil of secrecy around its future product announcements. All the information that has arisen about the device thus far has come from patent applications (which, for the record, Apple files whether or not it plans to use the proposed technology) and the admissions of third-party parts manufacturers, leaks that have seemingly led Apple to consider developing more parts in-house.

It’s still an elusive target for our old friend Mr. Blurrycam, but We just got some basic specs on the new, decidedly more newspaper- and college textbook-friendly Amazon Kindle DX. Here’s what we know: it’s got a 9.7-inch display (as opposed to the current six-inch unit), a long-requested built-in PDF reader, and the ability to add annotations in addition to notes and highlights — whatever that means. We’re also hearing that New York Times will be offering a $9.95 / month subscription, a little lower than the current $13.99. Honestly, that all sounds to us like this really is just a Kindle with a larger screen, not the newspaper savior it’s being hyped as, but ol’ Jeffy B. might still have surprises in store, so we’ll see. Seriously, can’t Wednesday just hurry up and get here already?

Update: Looks like Mssr. BC decided to throw down — check out some pics in the gallery!

Update 2: Some more details care of the Wall Street Journal. Chief information officer for Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve University — the college whose president will be taking the stage with Jeff Bezos — Lev Gonick said select students are being issued the new, larger screen Kindles (doesn’t specify DX) in the fall semester with pre-installed textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar. Five other universities including Pace, Princeton, Reed, Arizona State, and Darden School at the University of Virginia are also said to be signed up for the trial. As for the new details on the device itself, the report states it’s got a more functional web browser, with no word on how that’ll jibe with Whispernet.

Filed under: Handhelds

Amazon Kindle DX to feature 9.7-inch display? Update: Pictures! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 May 2009 22:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mysterious roadmaps chock-full of pretty pictures of fanciful handsets from the future have a tendency to appear every once in a while; on the surface, we have no particular reason to believe this one over any other, but we’d like to. According to TmoToday’s supposed leak, the HTC-sourced G2 / Magic is expected this summer — which seems like an incongruous statement considering that we’re now expecting it to launch as the myTouch 3G. That would have us believing that the doc is either fake or out of date, and if it’s the latter, that makes the other two scoops here still relevant and interesting: first up, a second version of the G1 is said to be launching in the fall (looking a heck of a lot like an Ocean 2, if you ask us). Next, we’re seeing a Samsung “Houdini” in the same time frame that could definitely represent the US launch of the AWS-enabled i7500 — especially since we’ve been expecting a Sammy Android set on T-Mobile anyhow. Whether this is all real or dead fake, it’s definitely plausible, and we’re figuring it probably comes pretty close to representing the carrier’s Android plans for ’09. Bring it on, guys.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Sketchy roadmap has T-Mobile G2 for summer, G1 v2 and Samsung Houdini for fall? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 May 2009 12:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Kindle 2 may only be a few months old, but the New York Times reports that Amazon is set to unveil a big-screen E ink reader, designed for newspapers, magazines and textbooks. Like, soon.

The idea of a larger, newspaper-oriented reader (including a Kindle) has been floated before, most publicly by Hearst, who proposed a 8.5×11-inch reader in February. This report revisits that plan, pegging Plastic Logic as the manufacturer of the device. But that stuff is decidedly future tense (“by the end of the year”), and digital access to Hearst titles is only exciting if you live in one of their papers’ markets.

Amazon’s device would have access to the same wide range of publications as the current Kindle, and likely a few more, but a larger screen could mean content would be presented in a different way. Hilariously, the Times reports that they are “expected to be involved in the introduction of the device”, but couldn’t extract a comment (revealing!) from anyone allegedly involved in the project, despite the fact that they work in the same cubicle farm. But this naturally Times-centric report kind of dilutes the significant of such a device: Amazon will likely carry titles from a vast number of news providers, and if the E ink experience becomes enough like newspaper—in term of news choice as well as literal usability—then this product could represent the newspaper and magazine industries’ first financially viable step away from dead trees.

As sanguine as newspaper folks might be about this, magazine publishers are, predictably, a little less optimistic. Conde Nast’s editorial director said, “I don’t think we would be anywhere near as excited about anything in black and white as we would about high-definition color”, hinting that even a mondo-Kindle wouldn’t be a game-changer for their richly visual magazine stable.

The NYT report doesn’t mention the most obvious possible fault with these plans: despite the fact that a larger screen would be better suited to displaying newspaper content, it might make the device kind of impractical. The current Kindle is small enough to chuck in a bag or briefcase, and carrying one around isn’t much more of a burden than toting a weekday newspaper or single magazine. Using a larger reader, on the other hand, would be more akin to carrying a clipboard than an iPhone; fine when you’re reading, but a pain in the ass when you’ve got to leave the subway. [NYT]

We’re beginning to wonder if we’ll ever see RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 8900 hit the AT&T airwaves, but considering just how long it takes for a phone to navigate through the carrier’s absurdly long certification process, we’ll chalk this one up to technical delays. After spotting the so-called Javelin in AT&T attire way back in November of last year, Boy Genius Report now has it on authority that the handset will finally debut next month. Unfortunately for those hoping for a little bonus in exchange for their patience, it’s said to be “a mirror” of the T-Mobile version outside of the bundled Bold themes. Pricing details are still under wraps, but if you’ve waited this long, do the dollars really matter?

Filed under: Cellphones

RIM’s BlackBerry Curve 8900 hitting AT&T next month? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 May 2009 10:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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